Sound Words for Pilgrims

"As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." John 20:21

From the glory and the gladness  From His secret place,

From the rapture of His presence,  From the radiance of His face,

Christ, the Son of God, hath sent me  Through the midnight lands;

Mine the mighty ordination  Of the pierced hands.

(pp. 61-64, Footprints for Pilgrims)

You must be in present dependence in preaching. There is no power unless we are receiving while we speak. What you need is a living connection with the heart of God, and then what flows out of the heart of God into your heart will come with power to the hearts of those you speak to.

To hold ourselves at the Lord's disposal secures for us opened doors when He has work for us to do.

We are left here to display Christ; if we are not doing this we are no use to Him or to the world.

The qualification for service is a deeper acquaintance with the heart of Christ.

The more you honour God by keeping man in the background the more blessing you will have in the work.

The Holy Spirit is always ready to work when we exalt Christ, "He shall glorify me."

The great danger is the presentation of any truth apart from Christ.

What will become of those cut flowers tomorrow ?  They will fade.  So truth that is separated from Christ will fade away.

Nothing can justify a lack of tenderness in the presentation of the truth.

We have to labour in faith, and in proportion to our confidence in God will be our expectation of blessing.

I suppose we shall never know the full result of our service until we appear before the judgment seat of Christ.  And it may be then that what we esteemed the least at the time will there be shown to have been richest in results.

If you feel "I can do this or that service," you are not the vessel God can use.

The Lord always sought to deepen exercises of soul, as He did in the case of the Syrophenician woman, refusing to grant her request till she was in the state to receive it.  We seek to shorten them, as, for example, when we press souls to an immediate decision for Christ, without considering whether they have been brought to that point by the work of the Holy Ghost.

When there are few gathered together at a meeting, remember there may be really as much blessing as with larger numbers.  God will bring together those whom He purposes to bless, and if we remember this it will keep our eyes up to Him, and that is one condition of blessing.

If any of us look for power or acceptance from anything that is of man, from manner, learning, fervour or eloquence ... we are at once off the ground of dependence upon the power of the Holy Ghost, because we are calling in to our aid that which has its source in man and natural abilities.

A preacher has never to be anxious about results; that is God's concern.  He has only to be anxious about three things: (1) the state of his own soul; (2) being in communion with the mind of God as to those to whom he is speaking; and (3) fidelity in delivering the message.

--- E.D. 

"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you". Acts 1:8

Do Thou, the very God of peace, Us wholly sanctify,

And grant us such a rich increase of power from on high,

That spirit, soul, and body may, Preserved free from stain,

Be blameless until that great day; Lord Jesus Christ, Amen !

(pp. 49-52, Footprints for Pilgrims)

It is a mistake to suppose that we can be endowed, so to speak, with spiritual power.  God never gives a fund of strength to any of His servants on which they can draw from time to time until the whole is used.  The power is always in Himself, and not in them, and only supplied moment by moment to those who are walking with and in dependence upon Him.

Bear in mind that we must not expect consciousness of power.  It is on this point that so many stumble.  They want to feel power, and failing to do so they conclude that they are in the wrong condition of soul for its exercise.  No mistake could be greater.  On the other hand, the Lord has to break down His servants ... in order to reduce them to the sense of their own utter impotence, that they may learn the lesson that His strength is made perfect in weakness.

Human arrangements interfere with divine power.

At conferences people often find more pleasure in meeting one another than in waiting upon God, and then there is a lack of power.  For many years I have noticed that when God is about to work He produces stillness -- a solemn hush -- and expectation.  And the moment He does this Satan counterworks and seeks to divert the attention of the saints.  We ought not to be ignorant of his devices.

Unbelief is a barrier that shuts out the inflow of divine power. 

A lady once called to me and said, "I want you to tell me the secret of power." I replied, "It is being broken to pieces and the consciousness of that."

J.N.D. has somewhere said that when we are occupied with past manifestations of the power of the Holy Ghost we are seldom in the current of His working at the present moment.

It is only by the Lord's own power that the smallest of His precepts can be translated into practice; while it is equally true that His largest behests are as easy of performance as the smallest, inasmuch as adequate power is always at the service of faith.

Unconscious testimony is always the most powerful.  I often think that at the judgment seat of Christ we shall find a word we have spoken casually, a little sentence dropped, has been more used than all our preaching and lectures.

The humblest believer walking in obedience to the Lord and dependence upon Him is displaying the greatest spiritual power.  Power is displayed by the coming out of Christ in daily life.

To be full of the Holy Ghost is the normal state of the believer, and if this is not so with us we should humble ourselves before God.

There is no power except in the Spirit of God, yet how often we depend on human power -- eloquence, learning, etc.  It is so easy to resort to human expediency when not in a right state of soul.

--- E.D.

"Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. ... God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able." 1 Cor. 10:12, 13

Oh, wondrous Love ! that ne'er forgets  The objects of its tender care:

May chasten still, while sin besets,  To warn and guard them where they are.

But ne'er forgets; but feeds them still With tokens of His tender love;

Will keep, till freed from every ill, They find their rest with Him above !

J.N.D.

(pp. 21-24, Footprints for Pilgrims)

What we have to do, whether to Christians, to backsliders, or to sinners is to maintain the attitude of God towards each of these classes.  He never gives up one of His own, nor diminishes His love, though He does change His manner.  As someone has said, we do not cease to love, but we do not caress a naughty child.

The perfection of the christian life is absolute trust in God.  All roads lead to this, and the one who reaches it in any measure will never be confounded.

Waiting before the Lord is the sure means of qualification for obedience to His bidding.

The fear of God can lift the feeblest and humblest above the fear of man.

Sympathy is the rarest of all ministries, as it is also the sweetest; it makes no show in the world, but it leaves its mark.

In praying for the sick I once heard a brother use this expression: "May those who are too weak to pray be able to lean."

Until the soul is at peace and in liberty divine things cannot be communicated.

We get rest by a revelation of the Father's love through Christ.

The one alleviation which always presents itself to my mind in cases of lunacy is that, even when reason has been dethroned, the spirit may be in conscious and intelligent communion with God.  I formed this judgment many years ago.

There is no pillow like love, and we have the Lord's perfect love to rest upon.

"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want" (Psalm 23:1)  "I shall not want" This conclusion flows, not from what we are to Him, but from what He is to us.

To desire blessing is easy, but the path to blessing is through waves and clouds and storms -- that is, through the deepest exercises.

The secret of many of our sicknesses and sorrows is that our hearts have not been true to the Lord. ... We assume too much when we are sick; we take it for granted that all is well with us, and forget the hand of the Lord may be in the sickness to recover the hearts of His people.

What is true of us is not always true to us.  Is is true of every believer that he is in Christ, but in order to be true to him he must reach that position in his own soul experimentally.

Whoever goeth to warfare at his own charges ? No; He who calls, equips and sustains; and the servant has only to learn how to avail himself of what is provided.  The Lord expects nothing from us, except looking to Him, and even for that He will give the power.

Let me put you a simple question: How many of you have said today in your hearts, "The Lord Jesus Christ may be here before the day closes" ?

We are so apt to look for deliverance in suffering, but I suspect that God's object with each of us is to teach us to expect a fresh revelation of Christ and to learn His mind in the trial.

--- E.D.

"Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 2 Cor. 4:17

Though thy way be long and dreary,  Eagle strength He'll still renew;

Garments fresh and foot unweary  Tell how God hath brought thee through.

J.N.D.

(pp. 9-12, Footprints for Pilgrims)

Ah ! it is blessed to be at the feet of Jesus in our sorrows, for there divine light shines upon them, and though we may suffer, and even be oppressed with our trials, we shall not, while there, doubt His love.

"Jesus wept." All know that the verses of our Bible are merely a human arrangement, and yet who can doubt that the Spirit of God controlled the one who made it in putting these two words into one verse ? They indeed should stand alone, inasmuch as they afford such an inlet into the recesses of the Lord's heart.  They have been the comfort of mourners in all ages, and they will continue to minister consolation to His people until God Himself shall wipe away all tears from their faces.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Untold sorrows characterize the human race, and this invitation is not confined to those who are laden with sin.  Jesus addresses any one who is bowed with any possible sorrow, and possible bereavement.  Whatever the burden upon you, the Lord speaks to you.

Your whole responsibility at the present moment is to "rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him."  And what a blessing it is that you may and can rest, whatever your suffering, on the Lord's breast.

It is indeed an immense thing to be in communion with His mind in His object in our sufferings.

God chooses my circumstances, my sicknesses, my sorrows, in view of what He is accomplishing. "We do know that all things work together for good to those who love God. ...  Because whom He has foreknown, He has also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son. (Romans 8:28, 29 N.T.)  He thus chooses the circumstances for us that will best accomplish His purpose of conforming us to the image of His Son.  The consequence is that, if in the line of His purpose, I will never seek to change my circumstances.  In fellowship with the heart of God I will gratefully leave that to Him.

How merciful it is in the ways of God that it is only gradually we approach our sorrows, and that we find when they come upon us that they are "lustred with His love" !

He alone who has made the blank in your life can fill it, and He will.  When all the blanks of earth are filled with His presence we gain infinitely more than we have lost. 

When the Lord returns we shall lose all bodily weakness, so that it will take a little time, as it often seems to me, before we find ourselves at home in our new circumstances.  How we shall rejoice when "In soul and body perfect."  For this deliverance we have still to wait, but the blessed hope of it cheers us in the midst of our pilgrimage.

--- E.D.